I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a novel and improved method and apparatus for allowing multiple secondary service providers to use the infrastructure of a single service provider.
II. Description of the Related Art
As the market for wireless communications grows there has been an increase in the number of service providers capable of serving a given area, as well as, an increase in the number of hardware providers supplying the hardware to meet the needs of that area. In order to differentiate themselves and to improve the service to their customers, service providers are offering an increasingly large number of services to their customers.
In their drive to provide better service to their users, service providers are giving their customers digital transmission, which provides improved perceptual quality, additional features and additional system capacity. Code division multiple access (CDMA) modulation techniques is one of several digital transmission techniques for facilitating communications in which a large number of system users are present. Other multiple access communication system techniques, such as time division multiple access (TDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA) are known in the art. However, the spread spectrum modulation technique of CDMA has significant advantages over these modulation techniques for multiple access communication systems.
The use of CDMA techniques in a multiple access communication system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,307, entitled "SPREAD SPECTRUM MULTIPLE ACCESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM USING SATELLITE OR TERRESTRIAL REPEATERS", assigned to the assignee of the present invention, of which the disclosure thereof is incorporated by reference herein. The use of CDMA techniques in a multiple access communication system is further disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,459, entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GENERATING SIGNAL WAVEFORMS IN A CDMA CELLULAR TELEPHONE SYSTEM", assigned to the assignee of the present invention, of which the disclosure thereof is incorporated by reference herein.
In typical implementations, the MSC (mobile switching center) communicates with an HLR (home location register) before providing services to the user. The HLR is a database indicating among other things the services to which the user subscribes and services which the user is permitted to use. The transfer of data between the HLR and the MSC is well known in the art and is described in detail in the Telecommunications Industry Interim Standard TIA/EIA/IS-41-C Cellular Radio Telecommunications Intersystem Operation.
In the recent bandwidth auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), companies bought the rights to use available bandwidth to provide wireless communications. Companies that bid and obtain the right to use the bandwidth may elect to either "retail" the services facilitated by it, building a customer base, billing facilities and so on. This is the approach undertaken by most companies to date.
An alternative approach is "wholesaling" services to other service providers that would then retail those services to their existing customers or use it to enlarge their customer base. In the present invention, the term "primary service provider" will be used to denote the company that bid and obtained the spectrum, and "secondary service provider" will be used to denote companies that purchase the right to use spectrum and mobile switching center/base station transceiver subsystem (MSC/BTS) facilities from the primary service provider for further reselling to actual customer (a common industry term for the latter is "resellers").
When the primary service provider decides to market its facilities to secondary service providers, the issue of interface between the customer service data base, the Home Location Register (HLR), and the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) arises. FIG. 1 presents these interfaces for the common case where only a single primary service provider makes use of an MSC. Communications between mobile switching center (MSC) 2 and home location register (HLR) 4 typically make use of a standardized interface provided by the Telecommunications Industry Association in TIA/EIA/IS-41 CELLULAR RADIOTELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS INTERSYSTEM OPERATIONS. Communications between HLR 4 and customer service data base 10, is not standardized and is proprietary to the HLR and/or customer service data base manufacturers.
Despite the fact that a standard exists for communications between HLR 4 to MSC 2, common practice is that this interface becomes proprietary due to proprietary enhancements made by the MSC vendors (which typically also supply the HLR). These enhancements are driven by the relatively long time it takes to modify IS-41, and the need to tailor new features provided by MSC 2 on a per subscriber basis. The indication of such tailoring is kept in HLR 6. For example, if a new subscriber feature is introduced in MSC 2, the records in HLR 6 must, at the very least, indicate whether the user is allowed to make use of the new feature, and if so, whether the user has activated the feature. This data is kept in the subscriber profile which now needs modification.
A primary service provider that markets its facilities to secondary service providers has two choices. A first option open to the secondary service provider is depicted in FIG. 2. The figure shows multiple HLRs (22A-22N), each associated with a secondary service provider. Each of HLRs (22A-22N) is configured and managed by a particular reseller. The reseller HLR (22A-22N) is connected to the reseller's customer service data base (24A-24N) similarly to what a "conventional" (primary only) service provider would do. The advantage of this configuration is the fact that the HLR to MSC interface is standardized, and that different resellers do not have access to each other's customer information thus providing the necessary business protection.
FIG. 3 shows a single HLR 32 connected to multiple customer service data bases (34A-34N) on one side, and to a single MSC 30 on the other. The advantage of this configuration is twofold: this model conforms with the IS-41 network model, thus shielding the MSC from some of the new requirements pertaining to use by multiple service providers and at the same time, allows the existing practice of enhancing the interface between the MSC and the HLR, making it possible to quickly bring to market new MSC features. The problems with this approach are:
Potentially, different service providers may access and alter subscriber records that do not belong to them. PA1 The interface between HLR 32 and customer service data base (34A-34N) is proprietary. Therefore, a potentially large number of secondary service providers and a number of MSC/HLR vendors will have to coordinate every time this interface must be modified, in essence providing an ad-hoc standardization forum. This approach will again significantly slow the process of modifying subscriber records of HLR 32, slow the introduction of new features, and make the primary and secondary service providers less competitive when compared to a primary only service provider that has both interfaces (C and P) under its control.